The End of Cambodia's Family Affair

The End of Cambodia's Family Affair
Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2007 By KEVIN DOYLE / PHNOM PENH

Ieng Sary (at left) and his wife Ieng Thirith at a funeral for Thirith's
sister, Ponnary, the first wife of the late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, July
3, 2003

Behind every strong man, as the saying goes, stands an even stronger woman,
and in Cambodia's recent tumultuous history few strong women stand out more
than the Khieu sisters. Daughters of a judge and among the country's first
female intellectuals, Ponnary and Thirith were sent to study in Paris in the
1950s where they met and later married two other Cambodian students -
creating a foursome that went on to form the nucleus of one of the world's
most brutal regimes. The elder Khieu sister, Ponnary, married Pol Pot,
leader of the fanatical Khmer Rouge movement which fought its way to bloody
victory in Cambodia in 1975 and then established a regime under which an
estimated 1.7 million people died by 1979. Her younger sister, Thirith,
wedded Pol Pot's confidant and Khmer Rouge foreign minister, Ieng Sary; she
also served as the regime's minister of social action and education.

Monday marked one of the last chapters in this dark family history as Ieng
Sary and Ieng Thirith were arrested on charges of crimes against humanity,
to be brought before a U.N.-backed tribunal set up to try the surviving
leaders of Pol Pot's regime. Gendarmes and police special forces sealed off
the area around the couple's large villa down a leafy side street in Phnom
Penh, where they had lived as macabre local celebrities since striking
surrender deals with the Cambodian government in 1996.

The tribunal's co-investigating judges released a statement Tuesday
confirming the formal charges against the couple and announcing that the
Iengs' lawyers have requested time to prepare their clients' defense ahead
of a hearing on the question of pre-trial detention. That hearing will take
place Wednesday; in the meantime, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith are being held
in custody at the ECCC, the judges said. The Iengs have also said that they
cannot afford to pay for attorneys to represent them at the tribunal; the
court will cover their legal costs while it assess their claim.

Since defecting to the government in 1996, Ieng Sary has regularly denied
any knowledge of the regime's policies of extermination. Ieng Thirith has
been even more vocal: several years ago, she made a withering written attack
on Youk Chhang, Cambodia's foremost genocide researcher, claiming his years
of research into the alleged crimes of Khmer Rouge regime had found not a
shred of incriminating evidence and that his work was nothing "but lies and
defamation."

Youk Chhang, for his part, says Ieng Sary was considered one of the
"untouchable" Khmer Rouge leaders. His arrest and that of his wife have sent
powerful messages to the Cambodian people that the tribunal is truly working
to find justice for the victims of the regime. "[Ieng Thirith] was minister
of social action and education," Youk Chhang says. "She will have a lot to
tell us [in court]."

The Iengs' arrests are the third and fourth of five former Khmer Rouge
leaders targeted by the co-prosecutors at the Extraordinary Chambers in the
Court of Cambodia (ECCC) - the official name of the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge
tribunal established in Phnom Penh. Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch,
the regime's chief jailer and torturer, was the first suspect to be detained
in July. Second-in-command Nuon Chea was arrested in September. Khieu
Samphan, the regime's onetime head of state, is the last surviving senior
leader at large and many believe that his is the fifth name on the
prosecutors' list. ECCC officials expect that trials will begin early next
year.

Neither Ponnary nor Pol Pot lived long enough to see the tribunal
established; Ponnary was bedridden and suffering from insanity when she
passed away peacefully in 2003 at the age of 83. She had lived out her final
years in the Iengs' villa, with its manicured lawns and small ornamental
pond, oblivious of the fact that Pol Pot had remarried many years earlier.
Pol Pot himself died in 1998, denounced by his own followers, in a jungle
shack near the Thai border.

As court and police officers prepared the Iengs for the drive to the
tribunal's detention center on the outskirts of Phnom Penh Monday, neighbors
came out to wish them good riddance. "They killed many people and they must
be prosecuted," says Pouk Salonn, 57, the owner of a small shop near the
Iengs' villa who lost her parents during the regime. But with the passage of
some 30 years since the Khmer Rouge regime committed its crimes, the arrest
of the elderly pair - Sary is 82 and Thirith is 75 - was little consolation.
"Why are you only coming to ask questions now?" she asks, noting that there
seemed to be more media attention on Pol Pot's terrifying reign now than
there was when he was actually in power. "[The regime] was a long time ago
already."